There are three widely accepted methods of combining together a breaker and a carcase to form a radial tire for an automotive vehicle. One method is to have looped breakers formed prior to production of tire carcases and to have the breakers applied to tire carcases one after another as or after the carcases are produced. Examples of the apparatus used to put this method into practice are disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 49-31549 and Japanese Provisional Patent Publication No. 50-15743. Another method is to have looped tire carcases formed prior to production of breakers in strip form and to have strips of breakers wrapped on the tire carcases as or after the breakers in strip form are produced. A third method of applying a breaker to a tire carcase is to have breakers and carcases produced preliminarily and to combine them together in consecutive steps.
In each of these prior-art methods of combining breaker and carcase layers of a radial tire, a strip to form the breaker is attached manually to the inner peripheral surface of a cylindrical structure. In this instance, the strip to form the breaker is fitted to the cylindrical structure in such a manner that one longitudinal edge of the strip extends along the circumferential edge of the cylindrical structure. If the strip has irregularities of width throughout its length, the axial center line of the breaker thus attached to the cylindrical structure may partially deviate laterally of the breaker. A tire using such a breaker would fail to provide proper uniformity of performance.
In order to avoid this problem, the cylindrical structure to which a strip to form a breaker is to be fitted may be provided with guide elements adapted to prevent the strip from deviating laterally of the strip, viz., axially of the cylindrical structure. If such guide elements are located at an excessively large axial spacing from each other, the guide elements could not serve as guide means. If the guide elements are located at an excessively short spacing from each other, then one circumferential edge portion of the strip might be caused to ride on the guide element at one axial end of the cylindrical structure, making it impossible to have the strip correctly located on the cylindrical structure. The present invention contemplates elimination of these and other drawbacks which have thus far been encountered in a prior-art looped-article transfer apparatus used to carry out any of the above described methods.